Re: Running XEN under a Linux AMD64 DOM0

[Luke S Crawford <lsc%prgmr.com@localhost>]

Carl Brewer <carl%bl.echidna.id.au@localhost> writes:
> As a general suggestion, would you advise amd64-current or
> i386-current for a xen dom0 server with 6GB of RAM with HVM-aware
> cpu's to get the best of a modern Intel C2D server?  Core2duo 8200 is
> hvm aware and I believe i386-cuurent is PAE capable also?  There'd be
> little/no performance impact from using HVM?

Uh, just saying, HVM mode takes a pretty significant performance hit when
it comes to I/O (file or network)  -  there's not much overhead if all you
do is cpu/memory access, as the intel vt takes care of that; but once you
start hitting disk or network, I believe Xen emulates real hardware using
code pulled from qemu.  

On windows the hit can be reduced by installing special xen-aware
'paravirtualized drivers'  that help to reduce the I/O overhead while
still running in HVM mode.  I don't know of anything like that for
Linux or NetBSD.